Former Kansas police chief charged over newspaper raid

Kansas prosecutors have filed a charge of interference with the judicial process against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, alleging he tampered with an investigation into his department’s raid on a local newspaper office last year.

Marion police raided the Marion County Record and the homes of two of its employees, including its publisher Eric Meyer, in August 2023 based on a search warrant that alleged the paper, Meyer, and reporter Phyllis Zorn had committed identity theft or other computer crimes to verify the authenticity of a business owner’s driving record.

An Aug. 5 report by two special prosecutors, Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson, cleared the paper and its employees of any wrongdoing and concluded that there was enough evidence to charge Cody for tampering with the investigation into the raid. Cody resigned from the department last October.

“Small town familiarity explains but does not excuse the inadequate investigation that gave rise to the search warrant applications in this matter,” prosecutors said in their report.

“A few minutes on the phone with the Kansas Department of Revenue was, functionally, the entirety of the investigation. It would have taken longer to draft (and re-draft) the warrant applications than the time to investigate.”

Meyer welcomed the charge but criticized prosecutors for not charging anyone but Cody and for not charging Cody in connection to the raid itself.

“While I’m pleased to finally be cleared of wrongdoing on our part and to finally see some sort of charges filed, I’m disappointed that the charges don’t address the underlying issues of the 1st and 4th amendments,” Meyer told The Hill.

“Even though the special prosecutors clearly indicated that the raid was wrong, the charges filed aren’t about the raid itself but rather about an alleged cover-up that occurred afterward,” he added.

The report found that the warrant would not have stood on appeal and that any evidence tied to it would have been suppressed. However, the prosecutors concluded that the officers involved acted within the color of the law and thought they were carrying out a lawful search against the paper.

The paper and its employees allege that local officials, including Cody, used the raid in an attempt to settle a score. A reporter at the paper was looking into Cody’s past experience as a police officer and had reached out to him for comment, leading Cody to threaten to sue the paper for libel.

The report concluded that there was not enough evidence to determine whether Cody or other local officials had carried out the investigation for personal reasons.

“The specter of ulterior motives, personal animus and conclusions based not on investigation but rather on assumption permeates much of this case,” the prosecutors wrote. “These factors arguably colored the perceptions of Marion law enforcements and civilian actors alike.”

“If Chief Cody harborded ill-motives toward the Marion County Record, he managed to keep them hidden in personal communications with other officers both verbal and electronic,” the report adds.

Meyer and other employees at the Marion County Record have filed civil suits against Marion County’s former mayor, David Mayfield, Cody, and other local officials for violating their First Amendment rights. Four civil lawsuits are pending.

Meyer alleges in his civil suit that the raid was “an ill-fated attempt to silence the press.”

He also alleged that the officers involved in the execution of the search warrant were responsible for the death of his mother, Joan Meyer, 98, who died the day after the raid.

The special prosecutor report concluded that there was not enough evidence to conclusively tie the officer’s conduct to her death and said that there was no evidence that showed they intended to cause Joan Meyer harm.

The raid on the Record drew widespread condemnation from press freedom organizations, which denounced it as an attempt to restrict the freedom of the press in the U.S.

Seth Stern, the advocacy director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Hill that his organization “welcomes” the report’s findings but questioned why the investigation took close to a year to finish.

“It should not have taken nearly a year for investigators to reach these extremely obvious conclusions,” he said. “We welcome the news that the former police chief who orchestrated the raid, Gideon Cody, will be criminally charged, he should’ve been charged with more than after-the-fact obstruction – the raid itself was criminal.”

“And Cody is far from the only one at fault here. We hope he and everyone else behind the raid will also be held accountable, through the criminal courts, civil courts, and courts of public opinion. They should never work in law enforcement or government again,” he added.

The Hill has contacted the Marion police department and mayor. The Associated Press attempted to contact Cody and believe he is now in Hawaii.